Abstract
Portuguese economy registered several significant transformations in recent decades, after thedemocratic revolution (1974) and the EEC accession (1986). A deep integration in the EU and anoriginal and unexpected context of Iberian integration are main points of the new picture. The changesin specialization, the emergence of a public service economy, the centrality of financial externalrelations, and the new condition of Portugal as a net foreign investor and as a country of immigrationare some of the main processes for the analysis of Portuguese economic Governance in this period.This last objective implies to study the coordination mechanisms of collective action. The State, as theagent of 'relational order', the market, as an increasingly narrow place of governance, and thecommunity, as the expression of the Portuguese specific internal structures, are considered in thispaper as main institutional arrangements and bases for economic governance